


Projection

by byzantienne



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X/1999
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-29
Updated: 2008-10-29
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:16:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byzantienne/pseuds/byzantienne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Seishirou were dead, Subaru would be haunted. But he's not, and he's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Projection

**Author's Note:**

> Playing with ideas about limerence and the mismatch which can occur between signifiers and signs. Otherwise known as the fic about the first year after the events of Tokyo Babylon.
> 
>  
> 
> Worksafe, Seishirou/Subaru, spoilers through all of TB, post-series fic. Takes place in 1991-1992.

> Limerence is first and foremost a condition of cognitive obsession. All events, associations, stimuli, and experiences return thoughts to the limerent object with unnerving consistency. The constant thoughts about the limerent object define all other experiences. If a certain thought has no previous connection with the limerent object, immediately one is made.  
> \-- [after Dorothy Tennov, Psy.D](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence)  
> 

Tokyo is no different. The city has not changed -- it doesn't bear on its face evidence of what's happened, of _any_ of the events of the past months, except for the changing out of one advertising campaign for another, one parade of faces for another. It isn't different at _all_, except that Subaru is out walking in it, out past ten-thirty in the evening, no one left at home to wonder at that. Out watching the shifting neon lights streak their colors on his skin.

The quiet drives him out into the city. The apartment which is Hokuto's and his -- the apartment which is his -- is too big for him. He rattles around in it like a loose ritual bead, can't figure out what to do with all the rooms. Going around corners, he sees shadows that he knows aren't real, or true, or anything he could trust.

Tokyo takes him in and makes him invisible, just like everybody else out in her. Even so, Subaru can't stop looking at the faces of the other pedestrians when he goes by them. They don't show anything; just happiness or sorrow or indifference. When they look at him they don't linger or dart away too fast. It doesn't show on his face, either, he supposes.

_People betray people_, he thinks, not in his own voice. And then, _do you really think that nothing like this has ever happened to any of them, Subaru-kun?_

Even inside his head, it's mocking.

Subaru walks until his legs hurt, until the arches of his feet ache from it. He has his cell phone in his jacket pocket. If the clan needs him, he'll answer. It doesn't matter where he is when he does.

The streetlamps backlight his reflection in the plateglass of a closed clothing shop, the mannequins a dim row. There's no difference _there_, either. He's thinner, maybe. Older, maybe, his cheekbones a little sharper. He stares at himself. The boy in the reflection doesn't mean anything; he doesn't _signify_.

He wants, suddenly, for it to show, for all of it to be _visible_, everything that happened to him, everything that was _done_ to him -- for there to be a mark, like there was for Seishirou-san, his eye and the blood running through his fingers, showing that he'd stepped in front of that knife--

Like there was for the Sakarazukamori, Subaru corrects himself, like there was for _my twin's murderer_. And that sign hadn't meant anything at all.

The face of his reflection is white against the dark glass, the expression drawn and empty and still. Out of the corner of his eye he thinks he sees the flutter of a long coat. His heart bangs against his chest. He's cold, all over, the pit of his stomach dropping out, and he whirls around.

There isn't even a prickle of sensation under his gloves. A bannerette, half-loosened from its moorings on the streetlamp's post, flaps in the breeze.

\---

 

When Subaru had first come back to the apartment, after -- _after_, the Sumeragi clan had taken most of Hokuto's belongings away for him, her clothes and her sewing supplies, her _tatami_ mats and the dressmaker's form in the corner of her room, the posters and decorations and -- It was, he's sure, a kindness. A consideration.

Tonight, he's in the kitchen with a box and a roll of bubble wrap, putting away what they'd missed. All the delicate teacups and the cooking tools he doesn't know how to use. They're Hokuto's as much as the clothes were, hers and Seishirou-san's. The two of them used the kitchen more than Subaru ever did, so much that he never needed to --

_The spoon in Hokuto's hand has one perfectly coiled ramen noodle in it, and Seishirou nibbles it right off, looking at Subaru the entire time until Subaru has to bury his head in his math homework, especially when Seishirou hums and almost **purrs** with pleasure, saying, "Your cooking is going to make some husband very happy, Hokuto-chan!" and then, " -- and if I could borrow it, maybe I could make Subaru-kun just as happy, what do you think?" and advancing on him with another spoon brandished, not spilling a drop, Hokuto laughing at him._

Subaru wraps faster. Tapes the box shut when he's done.

He sits on the couch, on the wrong side of it, right not left, Seishirou-san's side. He imagines the living room looks different from here, off by two feet of space. It is perfectly normal to sit wherever he wishes on his very own couch.

Stretching his hand along the back, Subaru looks to the left, to where he should be. There is no one there, of course.

He puts his hands in his lap, folds them, knuckle on knuckle, fingers interlaced.

\---

 

The train, full of commuters pressed close against one another and against Subaru, collapsing the folds of his _shikifuku_ against his body, passes by the stop that used to lead to Seishirou-san's apartment. Subaru has been awake for thirty-seven hours, between school and work, and he isn't sure when he last bothered to eat. The motion of the car is making him dizzy, his eyelids too heavy.

Without thinking, he gets off the train, turns out of the station, and walks an entire block before he realizes where he is and where he's going. His hands, inside the gloves, curl in on themselves. He wonders if he can press hard enough that his nails will go through the leather and into his palms. It has started to rain. Subaru feels fogged, bewildered, furious.

There isn't anyone there to meet him. There never _was_, he tells himself.

Everyone he passes on his way back has too many eyes, watching him stain the white hem of the _shikifuku_ grey with rainwater.

In the morning, Subaru calls his high school, informs them that he's dropping out. He has too much work, he explains calmly, and between that and the time he missed after his sister's death, it just doesn't seem practical. The receptionist is sympathetic. She wishes him well.

Instead of sleeping before his next job, Subaru meditates. Studies. Chants, his lips moving soundlessly, until the _ofuda_ slip from his fingers as easily as he breathes. With his eyes closed, he imagines the thin white paper edges cutting through a storm of petals, through black cloth and into the skin underneath.

\---

 

Sometimes when Subaru dreams, he dies.

Seishirou leans close to him, the expression in his eye is intent and he reaches inside Subaru's chest and rips him open, his chest and not his shoulder, this time, him and not Hokuto, this time, and -- it's _enough._ He watches Seishirou until he can't watch anything anymore, and even though it hurts, it hurts so much, the movement of his hand inside the cage of his ribs -- the swallowing endless hunger of the tree -- the way Seishirou looks at him --

The first time he dreamed it, he felt sick all the next day.

Only the first time.

\---

 

On his way to the new Inari shrine out past where the train lines run, Subaru goes under red _torii_ arches, counting them under his breath as he passes through. It is very early in the morning, very close to the end of the year, and what light there is is cold and white, reflecting off January snowfall. His breath steams in the air, soft puffs the same color as his _shikifuku_, coming faster as he climbs the stairs that lead to the shrine's entrance.

The priest meets him at the top. He's a very young man, not more than ten years Subaru's senior, and he shows Subaru around first -- pointing out the twin _kitsune_ statues, one male and one female, made by a local artist, and the carefully planned gardens around the shrine building. His pride shows on his face, clearly.

Subaru says very little to him.

"-- but I'll leave you to your work," the priest finishes. "We truly appreciate your willingness to perform this consecration, Sumeragi-san."

"I'm glad to be of service," Subaru tells him. It's true. Consecrating shrines sometimes feels like the simplest work he does as an _onmyouji_ \-- making a place better, purer, safer. Nothing else. When the priest leaves him alone, Subaru paces through the interior of the shrine, familiarizing himself. He catches his reflection, distorted in the polished wood of the floor, just black hair above white robes, no eyes.

He looks away, quickly.

Outside the shrine, it is cold enough that his fingers are numb on the _ofuda_. He begins the incantations, trying to think of nothing but purity, nothing but what he's trying to give through his _onmyoujitsu_.

Remembers, with a suddenness that almost makes him break off, the roof of Shinjuku General Hospital -- Seishirou-san and _cake_ \-- pride in his own ability, in Seishirou-san being proud of him, warm and fluttering all the way down his spine --

Squeezes his eyes shut, squeezes his hands in their gloves on the _ofuda_, chants on autopilot and tries to remember what it felt like to not have to remember when he was as uncorrupted as the ritual. The _ofuda_ fly from his fingers despite everything, fly and shimmer and make the snow around the sides of the shrine plume upward like waterfalls in reverse.

Subaru thinks, profanely, that he should exorcise himself. It is not _at all_ the most profane thing he has ever thought about Seishirou-san.

He feels his cheeks go red with embarrassment and then, deeper, with shame.

\---

 

Half past four in the morning at the end of February, Subaru goes down to get the mail before he finally goes to bed. He fumbles, blearily, with the key to his mailbox.

It's already open by the time he remembers the date -- one year, one year to the day -- and the sakura petals stuffed inside are spilling over his hands, the crushed scent of them all blood, all smoke, all --

He's not sure if his throat is choked against his breath with panic or with relief.

\---

_**projection**, noun.  
1\. the tendency to ascribe to another person feelings, thoughts, or attitudes present in oneself, or to regard external reality as embodying such feelings, thoughts, etc., in some way.  
2\. the calculation of some future thing.  
3\. a ghost._

\---  
.


End file.
